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The future of the Internet: experts weigh in

Mobile, wearable, and embedded computing will be linked in the so-called Internet of Things so that people and their environment can tap into artificial intelligence-enhanced cloud-based information storage and sharing, reports Pew Research Center.

Ben Curtis
/ AP file photo

A man takes pictures with his cell phone on Tahrir Square, in Cairo, Egypt, in January 2011. "Like the Arab Spring, we can expect more and more uprisings to take place as people become more informed and able to communicate their concerns,” writes Rui Correia, an expert polled by Pew Research Center.

By 2025, the Internet will flow through our lives “like electricity,” according to experts polled on the future of the Internet. Mobile, wearable, and embedded computing will be linked in the so-called Internet of Things so that people and their environment can tap into artificial intelligence-enhanced cloud-based information storage and sharing, reports Pew Research Center. The report on “Digital Life in 2025” is from the U.S.-based think tank to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote a paper on
March 12, 1989
proposing an “information management” system. That paper evolved into framework for the web.

“The Internet will shift from the place we find cat videos to a background capability that will be a seamless part of how we live our everyday lives. We won't think about ‘going online’ or ‘looking on the Internet’ for something — we'll just be online, and just look.”

—Joe Touch, director at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute

2. On wearable computing
:

“We may well see wearable devices and/or home and workplace sensors that can help us make ongoing lifestyle changes and provide early detection for disease risks, not just disease. We may literally be able to adjust both medications and lifestyle changes on a day-by-day basis or even an hour-by-hour basis, thus enormously magnifying the effectiveness of an ever more understaffed medical delivery system.”

—Aron Roberts, software developer at the University of California-Berkeley

3. On political awareness and uprisings
:

“With mobile technologies and information- sharing apps becoming ubiquitous, we can expect some significant improvement in the awareness of otherwise illiterate and ill-informed rural populations to opportunities missed out by manipulative and corrupt governments. Like the
Arab Spring
, we can expect more and more uprisings to take place as people become more informed and able to communicate their concerns.”

—Rui Correia, director of Netday Namibia, a non-profit supporting innovations in information technology for education and development

4. On the spread of the “Ubernet” which will create new “nations” based on shared interests
:

“All 7-plus billion humans on this planet will sooner or later be 'connected' to each other and fixed destinations, via the Uber(not Inter)net. That can lead to the diminished power over people’s lives within nation-states. When every person on this planet can reach, and communicate two-way, with every other person on this planet, the power of nation- states to control every human inside its geographic boundaries may start to diminish.”

—David Hughes, an Internet and communications pioneer

5. On education
:

“The biggest impact on the world will be universal access to all human knowledge. The smartest person in the world currently could well be stuck behind a plow in India or China. Enabling that person — and the millions like him or her — will have a profound impact on the development of the human race. Cheap mobile devices will be available worldwide, and educational tools like the Khan Academy will be available to everyone. This will have a huge impact on literacy and numeracy and will lead to a more informed and more educated world population.”

—Hal Varian, chief economist for Google

6. On the continued disruptive effect that communications networks have on our lives
:

“The greatest impacts of the Internet will continue to be the side effects that tower so high that we do not notice they are continuing to grow far above us: 1) More people will lose their grounding in the realities of life and work, instead considering those aspects of the world amenable to expression as information as if they were the whole world. 2) The scale of the interactions possible over the Internet will tempt more and more people into more interactions than they are capable of sustaining, which on average will continue to lead each interaction to be more superficial. 3) Given there is strong evidence that people are much more willing to commit petty crimes against people and organizations when they have no face-to-face interaction, the increasing proportion of human interactions mediated by the Internet will continue the trend toward less respect and less integrity in our relations.”

—Bob Briscoe, chief researcher in networking and infrastructure for British Telecom

7. On (successfully) predicting the future and then acting on it
:

“The most significant impact of the Internet is getting us to imagine different paths that the future may take. These paths help us to be better prepared for long-term contingencies; by identifying key indicators, and amplifying signals of change, they help us ensure that our decisions along the way are flexible enough to accommodate change. . . As users, industry players, and policy-makers, the interplay of decisions that we make today and in the near future will determine the evolution of the Internet and the shape it takes by 2025, in both intended and unintended ways. Regardless of how the future unfolds, the Internet will evolve in ways we can only begin to imagine. By allowing ourselves to explore and rehearse divergent and plausible futures for the Internet, not only do we prepare for any future, we can also help shape it for the better.”

—Sonigitu Asibong Ekpe, a consultant with the AgeCare Foundation, a non-profit organization

Shauna Rempel is the Star’s team editor in charge of social media. Reach her on Twitter (@shaunarempel) or via email:
srempel@thestar.ca

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